KOMSCO continues to play a pivotal role in the “digital economy” by expanding new digital services—such as mobile ID cards, the local digital platform Chak, and electronic signature authentication—built on its core values of payment, identity authentication, and value storage. These capabilities stem from decades of trust, security, and anti-counterfeiting technology developed through manufacturing currency, passports, resident registration cards, and other secure documents in the “real economy.”

As KOMSCO transforms into a digital platform company, it is actively embracing cloud-based services and evolving into a trusted public platform partner for citizens in the hyperconnected era.

To understand how public institutions utilize monitoring for essential public services, we spoke directly with the team responsible for operating the KOMSCO Shopping Mall.

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Q. Please tell us about KOMSCO.

‍KOMSCO manufactures and supplies currency, passports, resident registration cards, and other secure documents. Our production facilities are located in Daejeon, Gyeongsan (Gyeongbuk), and Buyeo (Chungnam). In addition to manufacturing various securities and security products, we also research and develop advanced anti-counterfeiting technologies applied to our products.

Recently, KOMSCO has been moving beyond the real economy to take on a major role in the digital economy. As part of this transformation, we operate digital public services such as mobile ID cards and the regional payment platform Chak, in alignment with national policy initiatives.

Q. Please describe your development and operations organization.
I belong to the Management Information Team under the ICT Planning and Security Office. Our team consists of eight members and focuses primarily on the Management Information System (MIS). We also manage the KOMSCO online shopping mall and other external digital services.

Q. The BTS commemorative medal was a big topic recently. Was it sold through the KOMSCO Shopping Mall?
Yes. The BTS commemorative medals were sold to fans and citizens worldwide. Anticipating a surge in traffic, we distributed users across multiple channels—including the KOMSCO Shopping Mall, Weverse Shop, and Shinhan Bank branches nationwide—which helped avoid major access issues.

Q. What major public services does KOMSCO operate?
One of our largest services is the Chak mobile payment platform. It is used to distribute benefits from various government programs and is currently supported by about 80 local governments, including Gunsan.

We also operate the mobile driver’s license service, which has an estimated 1–2 million users.

Q. What led you to choose WhaTap’s monitoring solution?
Until recently, the scale of our digital public services was relatively small, so we did not deploy a full monitoring solution. We only used temporary application monitoring tools during specific events.

However, as the KOMSCO Shopping Mall continued to grow, the need for intuitive problem detection and stable performance management became clear. This prompted us to consider and ultimately implement a full monitoring solution.

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Q. Which public services have been migrated to the cloud?
We have migrated the KOMSCO online shopping mall and the disposable cup deposit service to the cloud.
The disposable cup deposit program adds a 300 KRW deposit when purchasing a drink and refunds it when the cup is returned. KOMSCO issues anti-counterfeit label stickers to prevent duplication or fraud in this process.

Q. Can you share an example of a problem you solved using monitoring?
During the sale of a circulating coin set, we were able to quickly identify issues such as slow queries.

The circulating coin set is one of KOMSCO’s most popular commemorative products, consisting of six denominations (1–500 KRW). Since only a limited quantity is produced each year, scarcity can significantly increase demand.

As interest grew rapidly, we migrated our on-premise shopping mall system to the cloud. With performance testing conducted through WhaTap, we were able to quickly detect, resolve, and improve performance bottlenecks while reviewing the dashboard in real time—thanks to fast support from the WhaTap team.

Q. Were there any difficulties using the monitoring system?
Whenever we had questions, we contacted WhaTap’s performance engineers directly. Responses were provided in real time, so we did not encounter major difficulties during usage.

Q. Which WhaTap dashboards do you check most often?
We most frequently use the main application monitoring dashboard.
We also check the top transactions displayed in the heatmap, which allows us to intuitively identify potential issues based on the shape of the distribution chart.

Q. Why is monitoring essential for public services?
Anyone involved in service development or operations already understands the importance—and difficulty—of monitoring.

Public services face unpredictable surges in user traffic, so monitoring is essential for predicting failures and responding quickly. It also ensures the high service quality that citizens expect by identifying problem areas and where performance improvements are needed.

The KOMSCO Shopping Mall must operate stably 24/7, and monitoring provides the objective data needed to maintain service quality. Performance management is crucial to ensure that citizens can access public services reliably and in an optimized environment.

Q. How would you summarize monitoring for public service organizations?
Monitoring is essential for any public service used by citizens.
It improves service quality, enhances performance, and enables intuitive, data-driven decision-making.

Since introducing monitoring, our services have operated stably without major issues. Even when events or failures occur, continuous monitoring makes it easier to analyze root causes and stabilize the service quickly.